


Pulseless Electrical Activity

by SassafrassRex (Serbajean)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, As ghosts, BRIEF doubts cast on the team, Ghosts, Hope, Mysticism, Not the romantic kind, Overdue chats, Panic Attacks, Self-pity gets smacked, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, Shiro sheds glitter, Shmoop, Word-of-God Compliant, if i ever let you forget shiro sparkles it's dishonor on my whole family, in kind of a unique setting?, just the ugly stupid kind, or ignored, perpetuity, self-harm?, self-hate, shippy or could be read as gen, spoilers for S7 from SDCC, stealth velveteen rabbit reference, the handy disappearing kind and i'm not even ashamed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-05-29 15:05:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15075749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serbajean/pseuds/SassafrassRex
Summary: Shiro's hands moved like they were someone else's. A rage made wild pounded between his temples with the need to scatter, to unmake."You don't have to fight anymore."To scorch the earth until Keith gave him up.***But Shiro woke to a blanket of stars.Met with a face he knew quite well.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Pulseless electrical activity is non-shockable heart rhythm. There is no indication for defibrillation, as cardiac conductivity may be normal, however cardiac muscular contraction is not of sufficient strength to generate a palpable pulse. Recourse includes only chest compressions, epinephrine, and treatment of any underlying cause, with hope for resolution as this condition is wholly incompatible with life.

 

"I love you."

And he froze.

Keith had been pleading again. The same bereaved redundancy, but Shiro could only hear noise. The high-pitched whine of nails on glass, of scratches on skin, the same buzzing that had drilled in his head for _months._

Until—

_I love you._

And Keith was all he could hear.

Then the whine shrieked to new heights, skittering and scuttling and furious with him. And he steeled himself.

"Just let go, Keith."

The words were spat at the blurry view of Keith's heartbreak. She'd sweep it all clean if Keith just let this end. Dark eyes pleaded from a face that doubled and tripled, but Shiro's bit was between his teeth. The pain in his head took his breath away. He'd thought he could carry it, but today it came screaming forward from his hands, from his _fists,_ with a momentum that he couldn't stop. His hands moved like they were someone else's. A rage made wild pounded between his temples with the need to scatter, to unmake.

"You don't have to fight anymore."

To scorch the earth until Keith gave him up.

"By now," the words used his throat like a whetstone. Shiro swallowed around a mouthful of glass, but _anything_ to finish this. "The team's already gone."

This was all he had left to do. This one last thing.

Shiro was out of time. He'd squandered the chance to burn Keith alive when _something_ in his head screamed louder than her hiss. He didn't know how much longer he'd last. Raw quintessence bubbled in his blood, racing up from his arm to sear and to melt, to burn away. Disposable flesh pulled apart in strings.

Keith began to scream.

"I saw to it, myself."

He couldn't think for the burning.

And then white. A flash, an explosion, a perfect instant. Oil in a pan, a meteor in the atmosphere, sizzling and disappearing and Shiro was seared away to nothingness.

When he slammed back down at his site of impact, the first thing he saw was Keith. Keith, looking back at him with resignation, Keith, holding up the bayard Shiro left behind. Beautiful amongst the wreckage where Shiro had crashed so loud. And he seemed so very sad that Shiro reached forward instinctively.

The platform jarred up his elbows and knees— _his hand. His arm what_ happened to him? Helpless confusion tightened his throat and Shiro fought to breathe. He hurt. Everything hurt, he didn't know where he was. He'd tried to—

There was destruction on their every side. All around them the world was ending. Metal buckled and platforms shattered, falling apart in great pieces to tumble to the planet below.

But inside his head it was quiet. The buzzing, the _hissing—_ all of it was gone.

The quiet after an impact. After the knowing, when the dust settled and there was nothing left to hide the devastation. Shiro could not look away. "Keith..." he tried, an aimless reaching that didn't know what it could ask for. What could he _possibly_ ask?

And Keith didn't move.

He just looked at him. With love and with an abiding pity, and they both knew there had never been anything more shameful than what Shiro had become. What he'd let himself become.

Shiro tried to heave himself up. To do what, he didn't know. To take Keith in his arms (it _ached,_ empty in a way he could recognize). To beg forgiveness he'd never be able to earn. To just kneel at his feet and wait for things to end.

But he couldn't get his legs under him. Keith's face doubled again. Shiro felt cold all over. The platform was rough under his cheek and  

 

 

_Thump._

 

 

"Keith!"

Two men opened their eyes to the dark.

The first came to with a gasp. Splayed hands reaching for a face he'd seen only seconds ago, where was Keith? His head whirled around, but as he scrambled to his feet, he saw only stars. Stars and stars and when he looked down, he saw his two shaking hands but something told him that shouldn't be. Where was Keith? He'd...

He'd tried to kill him. The entire platform was falling, he'd dropped it right out of the sky, he'd tried to end them both. But Keith stopped him. He did. Keith was alive, Shiro _just_ saw him, _where was—_

"Not here."

Shiro whirled. A man wearing his face walked towards him from a distance. His same height, same build. The same scar on his face, the same width between his shoulders.

But light rolled off him.

Before a backdrop of galaxies, he carried an air. Something learned. Something that had reached through time to watch the lives of stars; he had age in his eyes. Crinkled at the corners over a quiet, knowing little smile, like his placid face got stuck somewhere between Gautama 'neath the tree and Jesus on the mount.

It made Shiro want to throw a rock at him.

The thought had him flinching, aversion snapping taut behind both eyes. _Not_ Shiro. Not— _that_ was Shiro. That one. He wasn't sure why he could know; he'd just been surrounded by hundreds of lifeless identical faces all dropped from atmosphere, all smashed to pieces and none of them was Shiro, yet this one...

This was the one, not him. It made him stagger, the sharp-edged truth that he hadn't been Shiro since Haggar sank talons into his head and rent him to shreds. Since before even that. His mind tripped over the notion that he'd never heard of the Gautama or his bodhi tree or anything else on Earth. None of that belonged to him. He'd stolen it from _this_ asshole, who stepped slowly and wore forever like he'd been built from it.

The man, who was wearing his _own_ face, raised a hand. But instead of a wave or a greeting, his fingers extended, palm lowered in a motion meant to pacify. A condescending  _Calm down,_ sanity's faultless admonishment to the pitably insane and was Shiro insane?  

He'd tried to kill Keith.

"Relax," the other called. "That's far off, now."

His limbs scrambled backward but the dark of the ground warped and flowed and he got nowhere.

"Who're you?" because he needed to hear it. Needed to hear him _say it._ Infinity stood at the other's back, he seemed somehow enlightened. It was an aura that rolled outward in paradoxically heavy waves with every featherlight step he took.

Looking at him, the source of Shiro's hostility came clear; he'd thought he knew what it meant to be himself. After seeing his face in the mirror every day, he'd thought he'd had it memorized. It bewildered him, to see Shirogane Takashi could be radiant.

Could be.

 _Blind little darkling,_ he heard a woman's whisper, yet he had never known the truth of his own dimness, until that moment.

A rumble at his back made him jump, fear leaping with him as he spun on his heel. He wanted to run.

"Wouldn't do that," the other called. "There's a Lion out there."

 _No,_ he wanted to run. He wanted to trip and to fall down into the dark because he'd always been safe in the Black. But Black had _seen._ Black saw him and knew him and there would be no understanding. He heard a Lion prowl through the darkness and he was afraid. A brontide opened beneath his feet when heavy paws passed close. Palpable nearness, just behind his back but when he looked—nothing. He stood alone, a traitor, an imposter.

"Who-..." he tried again weakly. "Who are—"

"Can you be calm?"  

"Where's Keith?" He had to find him. He didn't know what he could do. And to know what he'd done made his knees buckle but he _had_ to find him.

Terror finally boiled over and he turned to run.

He saw stars tumble and pinwheel and then he was gone.

 

_Thump._

 

This time, he woke to a glowing reflection crouched by his head. A sharp yelp, and he was scuttling backward, all elbows and twisted limbs like the ones that Haggar always discarded.

 _God,_ how had he forgotten the lab?

The quieter man watched the display and if he found it pitiful, the stumblings and shudderings of a failing experiment, then he gave no indication. Only his smile had gone.

"You're terrified," he mused.

He was. He could feel his own chest jump, air whistling in and out while his legs shuffled him backward. He hiccupped when he opened his mouth. "I- I tried—"

"That's over." Standing up tall, the other made quick work of the meager distance he'd opened, advancing in long, easy strides. "Breathe. You still have to, you know."

"Please." Shiro's voice shook, reaching for control he didn't have, and maybe he'd never had it at all. "Where's Keith?"

The other dropped down, hand reaching out to rest atop Shiro's sternum. It made Shiro's breath freeze on another hiccup, air halting halfway to his lungs. Above him knelt his better in every sense, who'd never betrayed anyone, never turned on his team. And if he was about to lean his weight forward and snuff Shiro from existence then Shiro wasn't sure he'd even fight it.

"Are they alive?" His voice rasped, like it had after coughing up litres of thick fluid on the day he was activated. Let them be alive. That's all he needed to know. Tell him they were alive and he'd go quietly.

A fixed point amidst his shuddering, the glowing hand pushed him back and Shiro clawed at the other's wrist. "They are," he said, "Quiet down." The calm was an anchor, and despite himself, Shiro clung tight in the wind. "Everyone is fine."

At once, Shiro breathed.

He let his head drop. The _thunk_ resounded like he'd dropped a brick, echoing at a distance that wouldn't make sense anyplace but here. So immeasurable was the divide between a world where he'd killed them and a world where he _hadn't god he hadn't_ that his vision swam and the sound he made was wrenched from the very bottom of his lungs. Relief stung like a wind in winter, needles driving into every exposed inch of skin. He hadn't killed them.

But a world where he hadn't killed them was a world where he'd tried.

Relief had lowered his guard and Shiro was hit full-force with the weight of his own culpability. He couldn't bear up. It was a hand reaching between his ribs, squeezing his heart until it couldn't beat. Nothing could go back and erase the look on Keith's face, the _mark_ on Keith's face from where Shiro burned his skin open. The drumbeat hammered the backs of his ribs. Nothing could unmake the virus he inflicted on his team, the violation he brought into their _home,_ and the truth could tamponade in his chest until he died gasping but it still wouldn't be enough to change the things that couldn't be changed.

He heard a muffled voice calling from far off. His list of regrets was so long.

The hand at his sternum was a claw. His breath began to whistle and shallow out. Eons away from his body, he choked and suffocated and the stars spun overhead.

 

_Thump._

 

Flat on his back, he re-entered again, in as much a panic as he'd left. Arms and legs flailed, his equilibrium in tatters.

"—sn't help you. Enough, this doesn't—" And without warning, there was a band of iron pinning his arms to his chest, holding him like a rowdy child. "This doesn't help you."

The words drove home like an arrow _don't fight the handler, do not give away food. This doesn't help. Don't resist the guard, don't come apart on the floor of a cell. Screaming doesn't help this doesn't help you stop crying_

His copy heart may have been made of wood, but the words were carved in its surface just the same. He'd struggle like he had to. It was always that way. Say the words until he believed them, fight the ties until he knew they wouldn't give. Fight until hope was gone, until his brain gave up and found a new way to live with the world.

So, he fought the other's arm for as long as he had to, and it was a kindness that the other held strong and let him. From above his head came the offering, "This doesn't help you," snapped and murmured and repeated, until he stopped thrashing.

Everyone was fine. Keith was alive. Crying still wouldn't help. The arm pinning him in place slowly loosened, until he pulled himself upright to huddle away, fists clenched at his elbows.

"Now," said the other, "you should listen. The thing that attacked Keith—"

"Me," he grunted, his first full breath of air. He wasn't very good for listening, " _I_ attacked K-"

"And _yet—_ " the sharp timbre of Shiro's voice made him jump; he'd never been on its receiving end, "—he's alive. When you had a half-dozen chances to kill him."

A knowing ache suffused the arm he'd used to rip apart the facility. Ice cracked open inside his chest, a sharp sliver of miserable hope.

"The thing that attacked Keith," the words came clearly, like it was vitally important they be understood the first time, "wasn't anyone. It was a will, and it wasn't either of ours."

He carried all the authoritative conviction that used to make Garrison cadets snap to attention. How much more then, did it draw the listening of Shiro's poor man's replacement.

"I've kept an eye on you." Lit with something entirely alien, eyes of silver pinned him in place. And though it wore his features, he began to think this thing might not be Shiro either. Shiro wasn't edged with stars, Shiro didn't wear forever. And above all else, there was no way that _Shiro_ could have knowingly suffered him to live.

But Shiro looked at him and said, "I wanted to see what you'd do. What you planned. I watched every time you stepped into the Black. For ages, now."

A strange smile as he cocked his head to the side,

"Ever since I found you."

And, degenerated copy that he was, he did not understand at first. The words were warm, so simply spun that he barely felt it as they worked their way beneath his ribs, rounded with affirmation. He could remember it, hazed like a dream. Of losing his breath, dying alone. And then the song of his Lion tearing him back to wakefulness when they found him _they found him._

 _You?_ His lips formed around the question, but he couldn't make himself speak it. _That was you?_

The other sat back on his heels. "So, I know what you are."

Stars tracked overhead. From somewhere around them, a Lion watched. And Shiro remained, one raw wooden heart. If he opened his mouth, he thought he might sob.

His original's fists slowly curled. "And you know what she is."

She was sharp-fingered hands and her reach made him shudder. _Screaming doesn't help,_ but when they tied him down he'd still always screamed.

The other watched him quail, unsympathetic but not unkind,

"There was nothing more you could have done."

 

 

_Thump._

 

The clone had been crying too hard.

He watched him rematerialize, thumping down flat on his back, and wondered how long it would take this time, before the little thing woke again to self-awareness.

The stars sang quietly and he swayed along in time. Before him and behind him, the Black Lion hummed, sunk deep in the calm of a swath of lights. At one, he breathed.

His eyes trailed down to the sprawled limbs. Wordlessly, he jostled the foot closest to him.

No luck.

His perturbation was his Lion's amusement, so he drummed up the will to be irritated, and heard the Lion chime his thanks.

He tilted his head back. Over time, the Black Lion had helped him to tune every single star in the wide span overhead. One of them, he'd given the same resonance as his first system's sun. _Earth's_ sun. It had been sentimental.

But the clone didn't need familiar hums. Organic creatures require organic comforts, and having Keith here had given him practice.

He'd had words he'd always planned to say. Words he'd repeated ad nauseum, starting from that first nanosecond he caught himself beginning to change. Words he'd known he mustn't lose. If he could reach out to tap the incompressible rod, but couldn't remember his _own_ information, where would he be? So, he'd practiced.

_Listen to me_

_Lance, listen to me_

_Let me explain_

_See them_

He'd used up the very last of them with Keith. Everything Shiro still would have said, the way he would have said it, at the time when he'd died. And even that had taken such concentration, just to remain inside Keith's perception. To exist in a manner that would be recognized as  _Shiro._ The Black Lion was rarely verbal and more rarely visible. Too inefficient and much too slow. Being with the Lion so long, his fluency with living things had undoubtedly suffered. It was lucky his new guest was one whose thought-associations mirrored his own primaries. Otherwise, this wouldn't be so easy.

Silvered eyes traded lights with the slowly tracking stars overhead.

That might explain why he kept calling for the princess, but still got no answer.

 

***

 

The Black Lion was watching them.

He could feel it. From the second he became aware of once again lying on his back. They were surrounded by the breathing of something colossal. It made him feel secure and it made him feel like a mouse.

He found out they'd held Keith here, but only for minutes. That was good, Shiro thought. Not enough time for this place to sink past his skin and start refolding, like Shiro wondered might happen to him.

He'd also found out that he was dying. The other had watched him at that, perhaps wondering if he was about to cry and _thump_ back through existence again. Give it time to sink in, and maybe he would. But Shiro was grasping the threads of his fears, and he couldn't spare the hands for one more. He took to reminding himself that the team was alright, that that was what mattered. And most of the time, that helped.

There were so many pieces he couldn't put together. His host remained quietly unbothered, pacing about with lights trailing behind him, answering some questions and ignoring others. Shiro's dread built to see just how far his shining other eclipsed his ken.

"I have you at a disadvantage." He smiled, eyes flashing in their first departure from quiet serenity. "There's a lot I know that you don't. The Black Lion's awareness spans multitudes." It was said simply. Not a bequeathment of knowing that would drive someone to their knees. Just a plain fact. The Lion—and this person—happened to span fathoms that he couldn't grasp.

Yet, the air thickened. When the elder of two mirrors leaned back in repose and stopped trying quite so hard to be human. "This is where I live. I can see how small you are."

It made him feel very alone, and abruptly, he wished that Keith were here. Keith would walk up to God's own front door and stamp his foot to demand an audience. Keith, who hadn't done the things that Shiro had done, would've had no call to be frightened.

The thought thrilled in his heart but sent ice through his blood. _Keith._ Who loved him. Who'd said so, plain as day, and Shiro still hadn't _stopped_.

He caught that up and forced it into the shape of something better: it was good Keith wasn't with him. Caught in the dark with a titan and its herald. It felt dangerous here, when the other took off his assumed humanity. He was glad he was alone.

Or maybe Keith would take one look at Shiro—at the real Shiro whatever he'd become—and know he was safe. That he wouldn't be attacked.

An intrusion sang through the dark turn of his thoughts. "You're nothing like the thing that attacked Keith."

Shiro clicked his teeth shut and thought hard, _fuck off._

The other's laughter saved him from having to lose his nerve and apologize.

 

***

 

The other wandered, so Shiro wandered behind him, just as shadows always follow. The noise from the stars made him uneasy, but he should have known better than to ask what was happening outside.

His original's gaze lengthened until it was entire worlds displaced. "Allura's trying to draw me out of the Black Lion. I've been yelling, but I don't think she hears."

He blinked back to the present, looking not quite bothered. "You're dying, but she could still help you. She's grown much stronger after Oriande. But Keith said you're gone, and now she's trying to overwrite you with me."

 _Overwrite?_ He felt his eyes widen. Overwrite, what was—

Keith said he was gone?

The wringing of his hands stilled. But he'd... he saw Keith.

He'd spoken to Keith.

Shiro hated himself for the way that hurt, but his hands slipped down to his sides and the words, "As many times as it takes," flashed across his mind in lurid letters. "I love you," flashed behind.

All of it said while Keith had still thought he _was_ Shiro.

Keith didn't miss opportunities. He had someone he loved and he had a body waiting. Would he say it was empty, when he knew it wasn't?

 _No,_ there had to be more to it than that. That felt wrong and Keith wouldn't do it if it was wrong.

"Is that always the way you build your thoughts?" The other raised a brow and tilted his head, dislodging the bright dust gathered at the tips of his hair.

And fuck that he could probably fold Shiro seven ways, Shiro snarled at him. Maybe a copy couldn't know these things and he was a copy who'd lived only a few years but _no._ Keith would never do that to him, not if it wasn't right.

His original blinked, unimpressed. "You haven't dealt with very much cognitive dissonance in your life," came the musing. 

No, Keith wouldn't. He wanted to insist. If it was wrong, Keith wouldn't.

But reason called to mind the look on Keith's face. Reason demanded he remember the heartbreak. If he wasn't Shiro, then maybe some things were just beyond forgiving. So, if Keith wanted him dead, then maybe he should be dead.

"Keith doesn't want you dead." His original blinked, again looking just shy of bothered. "Or maybe he does. People are always stranger than I remember them." He shook his head. "I can't explain why they would decide to do this."

The clone's hands crept to his elbows. Allura didn't know he was here. No one knew he was here.

And no one had looked.

No, no, _no,_ that didn't make _sense_. His team wasn't thoughtless, they—

They wanted Shiro. And they were closer to him than they'd been in a year.

The other had plyed him with validation. Had said that there was nothing more he could have done, had said the fault was Haggar's, not his. He'd said this, and despite himself, Shiro might have believed.

But his team wasn't looking for him.

Panic welled in his heart to gather at his eyes. Blurring his vision, it called this intolerable. He hadn't consented, they _mustn't_ do what they were doing. This was his body, it shouldn't be anyone's to take.

But _no_ , came a niggling reminder. That was a nice sentiment, but no, Haggar had taken it already. She'd picked up the keys to her property, and all his objections had barely broken her stride. If he'd been strong enough to keep himself from her, how much pain could he have prevented everyone? But he didn't stop her.

And he couldn't stop them either.

The clone hit the ground with a thunk, because there wasn't a chair handy and his legs just decided to quit holding him up. His alarm couldn't sustain itself, flaring high but already burning out towards despair.

He loved his team.

He'd have murdered his team.

Nothing could make that right but  _you're nothing like the thing that attacked Keith,_ and they were murdering him, on Keith's say-so and it all tangled up in itself. Overturned and unreconciled, the hopeless sight of a burning oil field.

Shiro stood tall across from him, staring quietly. After a moment, he turned away to wander, lights trailing at his back,

"I'll keep yelling for her."

 

***

 

At one point, he'd have had more he could have offered. Some meaningful gesture of words or hands that would have struck a chord of comfort. Or if not comfort, then perhaps hope. Or if not hope, at least affirmation. Now, he folded his hands behind his back, walking with eyes turned overhead, as he tried to think of what Shiro would have been doing.

It might have been considered a long walk by some. For someone identifying as human, it might have been unspeakably long.

The difference between a blink and an eon wasn't for his contemplation. He walked until he thought of what he could do, keeping a half-a-glance turned to where the small figure sat unmoving.

If not affirmation, then perhaps hope.

If not hope, then perhaps comfort.

If not comfort, then perhaps

 

***

 

"How are you?"

That was a question for a day and a half, but it came from a ghost wearing glitter, with eyes full of stars but not a trace of human feeling. Shiro just brought his legs up, to wrap his arms around them. "What happens when Allura's done?"

Where he should have had pupils, each of the other's eyes contained a distinct central light. Brighter than the rest, Shiro only noticed it when he looked over for an answer.

"If she finishes? I suppose you'll disappear. But at least you won't have to be here anymore." And he tapped the side of his head, helpfully, "I'm still yelling. Maybe she'll hear."

He wasn't sure he had energy for that line of thought. Shiro folded his arms to rest his head. The press against his cheek slurred his words, "How much time?"

"Out there? Virtually none. But it's different. We could have... We could..." The other looked down at his hands, bright fingers folding and unfolding.

"Days," he finally piped up. "Days in here, before you're gone." He looked around himself, spinning in a loopy circle. "Or not. That might not be true. It changes."

He puttered around and back and forth, trailing stardust and spinning on his heel.

Shiro buried his face in his arms. Days. Or not. Until he was gone.

"I'll leave, if you want."

" _No,_ " and his head whipping up gave him away. "Please," he couldn't be alone with what all he'd done.

The other watched from a careful point of stillness. Then he blinked once and breathed out. Sidling up next to Shiro, he dropped smoothly down beside him. His face carried no more warmth than a starfield a million lightyears away, but Shiro couldn't turn down kindness.

A shoulder leaned on his, as bright as he was dim. Shiro could feel oscillating patches of pleasant heat and icey cold, nothing at all like touching a person. "We needn't talk anymore, unless you want." The contact held from his flank to his shoulder, solid and unfaltering as his original stared steadily outward,

"But I'll sit with you awhile."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final scene of this chapter now has some [absolutely amazing art,](https://janestrider.tumblr.com/post/177715609997/kuron-week-day-2-confusionorder-a-shoulder) courtesy of @janestrider!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To readers, I apologize for the unscheduled delay. STEP2CK sort of ate my life, that was very much not part the plan when I started posting. Obv, interest may have since waned and the optimum post-s6 window may have passed, but we'll still get through.  
> (........Also maybe I should have just saved time and labeled these denial, bargaining, anger, despair, etc. It gets pretty clear.)

 

The thing is, it really did take days. Or whatever passed for them in a place with neither sun nor routine.

That seemed rude. While Shiro might not have managed the spiritual calisthenics it would have taken to jump straight from _denial_ to _resignation,_ he'd at least found a place where the horror wasn't quite so loud. Quietude with the notion of death is the agreed-upon point when people are _supposed_ to die. For maximum pathos and emotional payout.

There's a very narrow window of opportunity for dying _well._ Miss it, and noble stoicism has a way of going sour. And as Shiro had once been chagrined to learn (from watching many a stranger's death), most people did seem to miss.

Even him.

Even here.

Which again, rude.

Even visceral horror can't keep forever. The litany of _I'm sorry I'm so sorry I hurt them I'm sorry I don't know who I am I'm so so sorry_ does get old eventually.

"Now we get to deal with all the questions you weren't supposed to have time to think of." Shiro, the original, flitted between points. Near to far to near, in dynamic shifts that seemed more abrupt than they were.

Shiro, the copy, had already had it. His ordained _moment._ His quiet breath of melancholy, bearing its paperthin resemblance to acceptance. The thing he was supposed to look at and try to claim,

_This was enough._

It wasn't fair that he was still here.

Everyone wants to die at their best. Or if not their best, most at least hope they won't go out blubbering.

Yet

It really did take days.

 

***

 

Whenever they wandered, the elder expanded.

There wasn't another way Shiro could put it. Outwardly, he didn't change, yet when they strode across space, Shiro could sense him as _more._ And stars would come down, to alight on his hands like an escort. Not stars like the ones they walked beneath, not miles wide and burning. But stars like from a fairybook, little lights the size of a fist that kissed the other's wrists and temples. Their brightness managed to even outshine the dust he wouldn't quit shedding. They ignored Shiro completely, bobbing and dancing as though self-aware.

"What are those?" he asked, wondering if maybe, just maybe, this place wasn't quite so empty.

But, "They're thoughts," said the other, as a glowing bauble playfully spun about his hand. "I used to pretend they kept me company."

One strayed idly towards Shiro.

"But that's the problem, isn't it?"

Ice burned his skin and Shiro yanked his hand back.

The knowing eyes were haunted. "They do stay with you.

"Every _thing's perceivable here_..."

 

***

 

_Thump._

 

The sight of sprawled limbs made him sigh,

He'd gone and made him angry again.

For a ghost, he thought he'd been doing rather well. Remembering, that is. Words were beginning to come on their own, instead of him having to pry them up one by one, unrecognizable through their layers of rust. _This isn't helping you,_ those were words he knew from a time when he'd hurt terribly. He was proud of himself for remembering. It remained one of the most comforting things he'd ever learned.

Shiro's Lion was a Buddhist; he liked it, too.

 _Buddhist,_ that was another word he'd dug up. Another meaning excavated and brushed clean. Words like these had been long forgotten, to make way in his mind for other, broader knowledge.

What, he wondered, would become of all he knew, if he had nothing to store it on but a single mostly-human brain?

Of all the things that processed and thought, there were few quite so ruthlessly efficient as the living mind. It was why the Black needed a living paladin. For Shiro, flying had been as natural as breathing. But for a tangle of consciousness, wrapped up inside the Black's, it presented a terrible struggle. He could engage the wings, to move between points. He could _see,_ with the Lion's eyes. But walking realspace was harder. Moving on the surfaces of things, instead of slipping between them.

He gave the clone a nudge. No luck. Every time, he took longer to come back.

Allura was rapacious. The tug of her insistence never loosened, not for an instant. But he met it step for step, for he never quieted. Not for an instant. She still had yet to respond, even though now he’d begun to shout with words, weaving them in as he remembered them. He never wasn't yelling for her. How he wished he could make himself audible. There were so many times he'd have talked to Keith—to the clone, to the crew, to _anyone at all_ —if he'd only had capacity to manipulate the material.

It made him

Regretful.

There was a better word for it than that. Black didn't know the one. Black didn't know any words that he didn't. Something like _regretful,_ but

Louder.

The other drifted silently, sleeping away his dwindling time.

Not sleeping. That wasn't it, they didn't sleep in here. It was... not-existing. Un-existing?

He sighed. Tilting his head back, he let himself fall. 

And fall.

Stars rushed by as his shoulders cut a waketrail. Raking a new groove into the sands of his garden. He sank lower and Black grew colder. Until he'd found the darkest and the coldest places. Once, they'd been for him to brave. Now, they were a retreat. There was little need to be verbal or visible in surroundings with neither light nor air.

In the distance above, he could just make out the still form of the clone. From a vantage point of so far beneath the surface, he looked like he laid in the same plane as the stars did. Like he was a part of them. He was so small.

Small already and dying besides.

He wanted very much to help him.

 

***

 

" _...What does that_ mean?" Shiro's hand drifted up, tracking the glow like lanterns or fireflies. Caught between awe and terror at the thought of touching one.

Silence held, but for the whispering. Silver eyes met his.

"It means I know you haven't been listening to me."

 

***

 

He counted stars, he counted steps. He lost count and thought he might be losing his mind.

 

***

 

"Are they looking for me yet?"

 

 

 

 

_Thump._

 

* * *

 

Two sat across from each other. One with a knee raised, stiff and ready to spring, the other with his legs folded comfortably, looking more like the Gautama than ever, shucking a plume of stardust each time he moved.

"Do you think it wrong, what they're doing to you?"

The clone bounced his leg, impatient, though he had nowhere to go. "It wouldn't be the first time we've done something wrong." It wasn't an answer but it wasn't inaccurate. Shiro had been at the head of more than a few morally gray decisions. Evils, in the service of eliminating evils. This wasn't different.

The other raised a brow. "You're awfully small to be one of the universe's evils."

That brought heat to Shiro's face. Along with the dark thought that he was still being erased like one.

"However," the original unfolded his legs, smoothly rising to his feet. The copy didn't like the niggling appropriateness of staring up at him like a pupil, so he scrambled up alongside. "There is something you should know about yourself. From what I saw."

"What?"

The other turned to look overhead. He watched the stars like he was waiting for something.

Shiro listened hard.

But whatever strange cue the other awaited, Shiro had still heard nothing by the time he dropped his silvered eyes and began to speak. "You're right," the elder said, like a concession. "I believe there is something that's missing from you. It's difficult to put a discrete quantity to it. But you're not what you've appeared."

 

***

 

If a fetus can't open its eyes in the womb, it may be born blind.

Too few days of adequate visual input before parturition, and the potential to develop full visual acuity may be lost. The nerve pathways that compose the visual axis must mature before irreversible loss of tissue plasticity.

Firing must never begin before the clay is done being shaped.

The development of a human mind cannot be truncated. Steps cannot be skipped without incurring consequences that range from the imperceptible to the devastating.

By bone age, Shiro's clone is a man from Earth of 26 years.

By cortical volume, he registers as an adult in the prime of life.

By every physiological measure, both anatomic and biochemical development are complete and without flaw.

But Shiro's clone was commissioned less than three years ago.

 

***

 

When the other had finished telling him, Shiro was numb.

Too short.

It was all too short. And even what little time he'd had, he—

"You can't really develop from behind bars." A glowing finger tapped Shiro's temple. Three quick times like knocking on a door. Shiro flinched and swallowed. "Not even ones she built up here."

The palm came to rest on his shoulder. Burning hot and ice cold, but he barely felt either. It was a simple enough concept to understand, really; he wasn't whole. If prompted, the clone could give a complete—perhaps unnaturally complete—recounting of 26 years of life. That didn't mean he'd lived it. There were cognitive dissonances he'd never faced, because he had not lived them. His brighter (his better) told him there was nuance he didn't understand. Subtleties that as a neophyte, he couldn't grasp. Maturation comes with experience; experience teaches to anticipate. But for all the memories force-fed into his mind, he was still green. It showed in his failure to anticipate Keith leaving the team. His failure to anticipate Lotor's goals.

It showed in his childish need to play at being Paladin over and over and over. Never contemplating why he might do otherwise.

For months, he'd lived in a suspect world without suspecting. He hadn't properly questioned the pain in his head, he'd barely begun to wonder at the strangeness of his thoughts. In hindsight, it all didn't make much sense for someone who was supposed to be Shiro. Shiro was paranoia personified. Shiro was hypervigilance taken to a fault. Such was the life he had lived.

Shiro's copy had memories of experiences, but he did not know their lessons.

Shiro's copy was imperfect. _Unfinished._ He hadn't lived like real people. He hadn't matured, and the ones that didn't mature were always rendered down for biomass, per Haggar's order, so then it was only right, it was only _appropriate_ that—

"No, stupid." Lights rippled with a single shake of the other's head. "When children die, that's called a tragedy."

 

"So, I'm a child?" the clone asked, as they were making their rounds later on, the brighter leading, the darker following.

"You are to Black."

He tried the thought on for size, but to him it still just sounded like _incomplete._ He hadn’t been right. Or real. It was a fact that couldn't be argued; there were parts of him _missing—_

"Well," the other whirled in his tracks. Between one instant and the next, he was no longer standing, but laid out on his back with his hands folded over his stomach. "Does humanity still practice infanticide on the basis of congenital malformation?"

Shiro blinked. The likeness of comfortable lounging was performative. He knew that. But not more so than anything else Shiro had seen the ghost do. Shiro's presence was the only reason he even manifested. _Eyes and ears and voice,_ he'd listed, are human communication.

"Haggar made you wrong." Crossed ankles tilted back and forth, a loopy sway that dislodged stardust. For him, the tone of voice was straying dangerously close to something like impatience. "How could she not? You were incomplete. But in twenty more years?" He shrugged at the brilliant possibilities of human adaptation. Matter-of-fact, he said, "You'd rather not think about all you could be, if Keith and the team weren't cutting your life short."

The clone slowly lowered himself to sit with his arms around his knees. His voice came out small. "The witch did that."

"Withholding needed medical treatment is murder." The ghost took no prisoners. "Inaction always favors wrongdoing." His dusted head tilted to stare up at Shiro, "You can talk like you've given up on having a future,"

And though he laid supine and Shiro sat up—

"But it's still something you want."

—Shiro felt himself quail before towering height. The speaking of his truths filled his veins with lead. Shiro's spectre could have toppled him over with a feather.

Instead, that absurdly star-speckled gaze slid away. "The paladins passed a planet once. Something..." His face slowly emptied, stare lengthening to many thousands of yards. "Something was killing it. Voltron. Helped."

That described a few places. "Taujeer?" Shiro tried.

"Maybe." The murmur was noncommittal. "Or maybe I'm... thinking of Daibazaal. I can't keep them all straight anymore."

The clone bit his tongue. Of course, Shiro had never been anywhere near Daibazaal.

"Taujeer, then." Bright eyes returned to the present. "Yes. You weren't the ones who... hurt them." Halfway through speaking, he stopped to swallow. "They weren't your mission." He seemed to be having difficulty. Between a shake of his head and a gritting of teeth, the ghost's focus drew to a pinpoint. "But they were entitled to your help just the same. Weren't they?"

Strangled words came softly as his face seemed almost to dim, "Aren't you?"

And then he vanished.

 

 

 

_Thump._

 

Shiro whirled in place. _What? No, he—_

The ghost sat cross-legged with his back turned, slouching as though nothing had happened. "Aren't you?" he repeated. Starglow rained from his hair when he tossed words over his shoulder, "I don't see how you'll forgive them if you can't even look at what they're doing." The breeziness sat at odds with his having just slipped from existence. "Do what you want, but I don't have to listen to you claim nothing is happening. You do yourself a disservice. You even do Keith and Allura a disservice."

In the seconds he'd spent alone, Shiro's heart rate had tripled. The threat of being left for good did wonders for his cooperation. "What makes you say I'd be different?" he offered.

"What makes you say you wouldn't?" His original sighed at the timidness. "By planetary revolution, a human takes an average of twenty-five years to develop into a person. You've lived three." The chuckle was sharp. "What could you know?"

If only in his head, the clone found the courage to grouse, _And you've lived a hundred._

The harsh bark of the other's laughter overlaid a purring rumble that could be felt more than heard.

 

***

 

_I'm sorry_

 

_***_

 

At other times, the ghost seemed almost relatable.

"You weren't so terrible." Shiro, the original, leaned forward, drumming his fingers on crossed ankles, wide smile sitting at odds with the galaxies in gray that burned above his eyeteeth. "Strange. Didn't know what you were doing. But you took care of them."

"... That's not much to be." Summed up in four sentences.

A moment went by. "No," came softly. "It isn't." And starlit eyes lowered. "What happened to you wasn't about deserving."

Shiro had gotten used to the way the other's attempts at connection often drifted wide of the mark. He could appreciate that those words were said to comfort, and he could understand how yes, it could be consoling to remember that bad things don't happen to bad people and good things don't happen to good people, but things simply happen to people.

But the other wrinkled his nose like the words dissatisfied. The clone didn't need him to, but he tried again. "It..." and he seemed to struggle, "shouldn't?... have happened."

Despite—or more likely because of—the depthless knowledge he seemed to carry, sometimes the uncanny valley was just too steep. "It should not have happened," came out stilted. "To anyone."

The clone could appreciate that he tried.

"I'm not anyone." No one at all. And he wasn't Shiro. The team had _lost Shiro,_ and he was finally appreciating how short he’d fallen as a replacement.

The twitch of the other's mouth didn't make it into a frown or a smile. "That's a stupid thing for you to say." The chiding made him feel all of six years old, staring at his shoes, being kept after class.

"I'm an imposter," sounded familiar to him. It was a pathetic, self-pitying thing to waste words on, but he felt willing to take the hit.

"Yes, you are." And his original let it land as heavy as was deserved. "You've been playing at Shiro and you're not. Not completely." When he looked back up, the luminous face was wearing Shiro's smile. The patient one for dealing with idiots; the clone had memories of practicing it in a mirror. "But you already know the things your value does and doesn't depend on."

He leaned back, stretching his crossed legs in front of him to brace back on his palms. "Still, I'm not sure I could make you believe them in the span of one talk. Or two. There are limits, when dealing with the profundity of stupidity people carry with their self-worth."

At the dumbass look that had taken over his copy's face, the original Shiro tossed his head back for a laugh. The column of his throat shook and glittering white kicked up off his edges. "Not saying Shiro never had problems with that too," and _like fuck he had._ Like fuck he _ever_ could have. The clone suddenly wished again for that rock to throw at him, sitting there and sparkling like something marketed to five-year-olds.

The irritation grew instead of shrank, until even he was surprised at the ferocity. As he tried to breathe his temper back down, it was only then that he noticed the other's habitually odd phrasing when discussing who he had been.

 

***

 

_"I can't tell if you're acceptance or just apathy."_

 

_Hands outsplayed like catching rain, "I can't either."_

 

***

 

Shiro dreamed this time long and he dreamed his time short.

When the other taught him to tune a star, and laughed when Shiro choose Betelgeuse for its match, he thought he must have been here for eons.

But when he wound him up with talk of Haggar, suddenly the burn of Keith slicing through his arm was only minutes old.

And when the words taunted, _It's still something you want,_ Shiro wondered if there was any escape.

 

***

 

_I couldn't take care of them_

 

***

 

"You'd better do right out there." _Better than I did._

The ghost looked over his shoulder, questioning. And the displacement of dust that haloed his head in a beautiful ring seemed such the perfect joke.

"My... sleeve, I guess—ours?—you'll be driving it. You probably don't even remember how having a body works, but you'll be driving." Shiro wasn’t sure why his voice was coming out so tight, or why his smile felt precarious. "My gift, from me to you. And the others. So take care of it."

It wasn't meant as anything but bitter humor, and it made his teeth grit together when the other snapped it up like a hen with a mouse.

"Can you do that? How do you give people something they're taking?" The original tilted his head. "Something I'm taking? Is it even possible?"

Shiro felt helpless. "I love them." The words seemed so small. It came out exasperated, but what else was there? Present company had worn him down. Rather than look at the other's face, he turned out towards the stars, muttering, "Your question's academic." He'd always forgive them. It wasn't measured in _should_ or _shouldn't,_ it was just something he did. There was very little Keith could do, no matter how horrible, that would make Shiro give up on him.

He'd promised that, after all.  

Shiro could never fault any of them for very long. Physically, he _couldn't._

A sudden realization made him roll his head back over his shoulder, glare settling comfortably on his features. "That confuses you, doesn't it?"

The brilliant gaze just narrowed.

Shiro was still thinking about that later on when they'd finished with the sanity-sustaining routine of their rounds. He wasn't sure what the other wanted. If he was pushing him to admit he resented his team, he wouldn't make much progress.

Not when everything had been Shiro's doing anyway.

 _Everything's perceivable here._ That was true. And when he looked at everything long enough, there was only one common denominator.

The paladins were only out in space, because Shiro came back to Earth. That meeting brought Lance to Keith, and then to the Blue Lion. Shiro could have taken Lance up on the invitation to pull rank, could have sent them back home once the immediate danger had dropped down. Shiro could have insisted to Allura in no uncertain terms that she _find someone else._ But he didn't. His past was a mess of errors and mishandling.

The Arus infiltration was for Shiro to prevent.

Naxcella was Shiro's mistake.

Kerberos was Shiro's mistake.

 

***

 

_I'm so sorry_

 

***

 

Too much time to think _was_ Shiro's worst enemy. It had only been a matter of how much of it.

If he hadn't been made like this.

If he'd have tried harder.

If he'd have been more watchful.

If he hadn't always pushed so far.

If he just...

Which was when Shiro whirled on the other and took a swing at him.

And it landed. Harmlessly—the other just turned his head back around—but it was pressure. Contact. _Impact,_ in a place of emptiness.

And Shiro took that as leave to lose his temper.

Something took hold. Like when _she_ had taken hold. His original bled light and he wanted it on his fists. On his feet. On his knees and elbows, until it all ran out and it quit coming back. He lunged at him. Aversion immediately speared behind his eyes, he couldn't hold back the cry that tore between his teeth. It _hurt._ When his knuckles met with wide-eyed face, it _hurt._

So he did that again. When his foot slammed against the other's jaw, it hurt. When he was knelt with the other's collar in hand, dragging him up so Shiro's fist could smash across that blank, placid face, then it hurt also.

He hated him. He hated being here. He threw himself into every hit, thunderous in the way fighting Zarkon had been thunderous, and the contempt was addictive. It was anger from back when he was a child. He hated the body that was falling apart. He hated every failed effort and therapy it wouldn't respond to. He hated that everyone at the Garrison had to work around him. There was relief each time his fist swung down. It was _everything_ he'd hated, but could never punish.

It was when Adam wouldn't wait for him. It was the ship that abducted him off of Kerberos, the guard that liked to kick them. It was every person he'd ever hurt for the Galra. And the arm they grafted to his shoulder while he couldn't do a thing about it.

It was his Lion, who wouldn't even _speak_ to him for months now.

It was his team doing _nothing_ while he rotted in here.

It was every time he'd let them down because he just couldn't get this right. When hands reached up to stop him, he bent them back until the snap made him gasp. He couldn't resist smashing his own face again and again, he'd never get enough of it.

The relief had him crying.

Then he couldn't stop crying.

It didn't matter how many times the sky upended. The growing ache beneath his ribs, that was something he saved for later. He landed on his back, time and again—

 

_Thump._

 

_Thump._

 

_Thump._

 

_Thump._

 

—And still, he couldn't shut himself up.

There was no block or dodge when the other's patience ran out. Just a decision to no longer be in the way of Shiro's hands. And when Shiro tried to keep after him, his legs gave out. His teeth grit against garbled curses and insults that came fast enough to smear together. He gulped air between heaving it all up. The other stood like a statue to be cross-examined, but all Shiro was asking was where the fuck he'd been hiding, sitting on his hands when there was a blade at Keith's _throat_ and Shiro was the one who put it there? When Haggar came and she took _everything_ and he didn't stop her. It was his _own body_ and he didn't even stop her what kind of _worthless-_ what kind of _pathetic—_

His head swam again, swaying over locked elbows. His words slurred. But the spinning stars didn’t come. Rumbling jarred his hands and knees. Under the glassy floor, a mouth opened. Rocketing up like a shark, yawning wider than Shiro could see.

His crying stopped when the Black Lion swallowed him whole.

By the time he was spat out, he was so exhausted he couldn't move. Black dumped him unceremoniously to land in a sprawl, where the other waited, looking at Shiro like he'd never seen him before. "Did that help you?"

With his face so close, Shiro could have spit right in his eye. He rolled himself over, to give the other his back. But instead, there he was. Waiting. Shiro shut his eyelids, only to find them transparent. Shiro turned away again but no. There he was. There he _still_ was, wide eyes glowing like frightful suns. A far cry from his typical quiet, Shiro's original was flaring high enough to burn, existing everywhere at once. Agitation strained his seams until he was perceivable in a way that couldn't be escaped.

"You stupid fuck," sounded human enough to make Shiro's head jerk in surprise, "you accelerated your decay, do you feel _better?_ " He breathed out and stars blazed in anger.

Shiro looked at the face he apparently hated most in the world. "No." No, he just felt empty. He just felt like he'd been crying.

There wasn't a mark on him. Not a scratch, not after everything. It had all just been drama. Sound and fury and stupid tantrum, Shiro hadn't managed to do a thing.

Nothing, except for he'd managed to scare him. As the other fretted and pawed, Shiro snorted a laugh.

His original looked up, stricken.

"This doesn't help you," Shiro giggled. It wasn't very funny, but the words just tumbled out.

Shiro once took a fall, running the hills behind his grandfather's home. It had been the work of years, getting him to the point where he could exercise like anyone else. Finally finding a therapy that _held._ It was everything he'd wanted, and of course, he overdid it. He walked back on a fractured ankle for over an hour, and wrapped it himself because he was too embarrassed to show anyone. Four days later, when his foot was twice its usual size and he couldn't straighten his ankle at all, an emergency clinic X-ray showed how much more he'd damaged himself by not coming in when it first happened. The expression Shiro's grandfather had worn, was the same expression now being pointed at Shiro's clone.

The hand at his shoulder fisted. Slowly, like the ghost might grab on and shake him. "Don't do that again."

The clone couldn't think of anything else cruel to say. He was an ugly crier and apparently he was ugly with this too. Rolling over onto his front, his arms shook when he tried to push himself up. He hurt. Breathing made his chest ache. There wasn't any sleeping in here, but he wanted so much to sleep.

If nothing else, he'd shortened his time. He was dying anyway, it didn't matter what he did now. What didn't make sense, he thought, was the Black Lion intervening. What didn't make sense was the spirit of unshakable calm that he'd somehow brought to its knees, hovering by Shiro's head to tell him how singularly stupid he was.

To his mortification, the other had to catch him when his arms gave out. He tried to make it to his hands and knees, but he couldn't shake him off.

His original's voice sounded hollow. "Well. Now I know why it was so easy for you to excuse _them_."

 

***

 

_I'm sorry_

 

***

 

Shiro's clone had displaced his anger at his team and surroundings onto himself. Onto the ghost who he perceived to be himself.

The ghost knew that. He understood that was a neurotic defense mechanism oft-employed by individuals whose anger could not coexist with the requirements of their day-to-day living.

He knew what it was. Shiro had done it. Shiro had done it and more.

But he couldn't...

He couldn't remember when. He couldn't outline the shape of its happening. The was no instance he could point to, to identify how he'd learned what he knew.

If the other was experience without lessons, then he must have been the opposite.

He could detail the fallacious reasoning that lead to the clone's self-destructive behaviours.

But something he could not explain was how it had sickened him. He had no frame of reference for why the senselessness of it bothered him so much.

He'd forgotten.

He'd completely forgotten.

 

***

 

_I don't know who I am_

 

***

 

In the aftermath, tensions waxed and waned like the moon but there was no moon here, only stars. Shiro could no longer discern if he had regrets or what they were. He was empty.

"I don't know if I'm glad you're still here." The other's eyes were mirrors. Distant and flat.

So, Shiro picked a direction and started walking.

And walking.

He wandered towards emptiness darker and colder, and he didn't expect that he would be followed. Yet no matter how he walked, he couldn't outpace the other's voice.

"It was a lot of screaming early on. I was scared to be here alone."

Shiro's fears had never been the emptiness of space. His nightmares were never of being caught outside an airlock. But here the stars hissed and the echoes were endless. And he was but a threadbare copy of someone stronger. If the astral plane had nearly broken his original, maybe he would be swallowed whole.

But the ghost would not be gotten rid of. Angered silence tailed him everywhere. There was always a presence right behind him. Right there, right behind him, however far he went. How many times had he asked himself if he was insane, then reasoned he wasn't because he could ask? Then reasoned that asking was a poor way to reason. It wasn't until Keith said, "Yes, I forgive you," that Shiro remembered he wasn't here.

 

***

 

As it turns out, very few die well.

 

Eventually, he did ask him to leave. He couldn't take the blank knowing any longer. Yet barely a moment thereafter, he was crying for him to please come back, he was scared to be here alone.

The stars hissed. He curled tight with his arms over his head, wishing he could shut the noise out. When a solid hand landed between his shoulders, he screamed.

But Shiro seized that hand and didn't send him away again.

The bright eyes remained unblinking. The alien hands rested across his back, featherlight, like their touch could shatter. Burning hot and freezing cold, they held him lightly and let him shake, 

_I'm sorry I don't know who I am I'm sorry I'm so sorry_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if I should Warn/tag for an author's note but... "Discussion of Death"
> 
> Strange things happen with patients on hospice (i.e. "terminal"). Specifically with *young* patients (<60; the old ones have usually seen enough to know that Murphy will never let you go until it's maximally awful and inconvenient). One thing that's happened, is they have this idea that they're dying tomorrow, but then it all winds up taking another few weeks. They can appear very calm and zen and accepting. But then the next day dawns and they're still stuck here. And you walk in and they're throwing a tantrum in their oatmeal.
> 
> It's not that that isn't understandable. It's very understandable. But it takes a lot of wind out of the idyllic 'calm in the face of death' idea.
> 
> I came across a bunch of post-S6 Kuron death fics where the last thing he saw was Keith's face, and Kuron just loves him soooooo much that he goes to his death almost smiling bc if Keith and the others are okay, then "that was enough."
> 
> To each his own, but to me at least, it felt a smidge distasteful, if just for the sheer volume of it. (Though tbf, by definition, that's not really acceptance, that's just still denial, so, certainly not *as* distasteful.) I mean yes, it would be convenient if dying people were just immediately okay with dying. Yeah, that would be handy for the rest of us, it would make us feel much better.
> 
> But uh. People tend to want to live. Yes, fear for loved ones IS one of the well-known (and very respectable) things that haunts them...
> 
> But what not every person will to tell their family (though some will definitely tell a loser medical student), is that they just don't want to die. For their own sake. Completely outside of worrying for loved ones, they're just scared. They're scared, they're in pain, they hate everything about this. Especially if they're dying young (again, under 60 IS quite young). And people can have a LOT of guilt for that feeling. Like, a whole lot (hence, chapter end). And they shouldn't. That's ridiculous, of course they shouldn't.
> 
> I'm not saying this to make ppl sad about loved ones or claim you weren't supportive enough or anything like that. Not at all. Just most people visibly have to make peace with it a thousand different times. Maybe less 'make peace,' and more 'hope that the actual dying coincides with a moment when you're feeling peaceful and the last thing you did wasn't that fit with your oatmeal' (if you still care, which by that point, you really may not). In any case, I think most of them need support more than they let on.
> 
> Anyways. Yeah. My two cents in the A/N space.
> 
> And of course it's Shiro, so he has guilt hemorrhaging from every orifice anyway. It was definitely something to write about, if you had issues with yourself and suddenly were locked in a room with another you.
> 
> As for OG!Shiro he's doing his best, remembering his words. The closer it is, the slower it comes back, you know? He has a much easier time with smth like 'Infanticide based on congenital malformation' than 'I've been pissed off and frightened and I was all alone here.'
> 
> Final thing: 'it may be born blind'-- there's of course more complication to it than that, and kids' brains (eyes, esp) ARE pretty plastic, so there are def things that can be done. Still, 20/20 is way off the table and uncorrectably leagally blind may be the cards.  
> Think that's all that needed saying in this longest ever A/N...
> 
> Anyways. If you have any thoughts (positive or negative), please consider leaving a comment


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The eps say team voltron has been in space ~ 2 years. Project Kuron would have to have begun work while Shiro was still having his happy fun year from hell. So, round up and say the clone is three.

 

His original had been patient with him, despite his outburst. But the cold never left his eyes, and Shiro couldn't let go the knowledge he'd be folded seven ways inside out if it ever crossed the other's mind.

Still, if there was one thing to be said for boring a hole and letting poison run out, it was that perhaps Shiro could think clearer, now. Yes, sometimes he heard Keith. But then, sometimes he saw himself.

Such was the place where he lived.

 

***

 

He could still remember what it was to be miserable. Not like he had initially, of course. The shrieking wreck of the newly dead who just wanted to go home. It had faded, smoothed down into the rest of his existence as he'd lost the capacity to carry hope.

But it wasn't gone.

Far-reaching knowledge at his fingertips. The closeness of his Lion, who loved him so deeply that Shiro once would have wept, just to touch the edges of the Black's compassion—

And still, he'd despaired.

But Black understood. Better than even Shiro did, what it was to wish for people. The Black still loved Zarkon, even after everything. Loved him and missed him. Few could know better, the ache of longing for loved ones forever out of reach.

He'd had the temerity to ask if that was why Black wouldn't let him go. If it was why he was forced to linger. He was dead, what was the point of keeping him here? He lost track of the times he asked that question, huddled amid the wealth of existence and wanting just to die.

But of course, he'd sold his Lion short. When all at once things came to a head, he suddenly saw his reason.

Keith had need of him.

And if Keith needed him, he couldn't but come running.

The miserly way his Lion kept him, the maddening eternity he'd spent in silence, it hadn't been for nothing. For the first time in he didn't know how long, he'd had power to affect change. To _speak_. To speak the words he'd worked to remember. To aid.

And when he had done so, he hoped he might finally die. Might _finish_ dying, and finally be free from here.

But instead, someone new was dumped at his feet. Courtesy, again, of his meddlesome Lion. Someone as human as he was not, who'd never known freedom a day in his life. Who was dying, when he might still have been saved. But in an existence comprising trillions, not a single person tried to help him.

So, instead of finally being allowed to rest, Shiro's rusted heart was jolted to motion, faced with something it could not tolerate.

 

***

 

It took some time, but eventually Shiro's original seemed to forgive what he'd tried to do to himself. And they walked again, making their rounds.

The first time the other staggered was at the edge of a swirling nebula, when he'd been trying to explain to Shiro something wonderful.

"If you were a flea," he'd been saying, "living on the back of an elephant, you'd think that same way. From ground level, existence would look empty. But if you could ever jump high enough, you'd look down and see you lived among something living." Starlight haloed his head as his mouth lifted at the corners. "The first astronauts came back to Earth as—"

The word would have been "mystics." But instead, Shiro watched, as though in slow motion, the catch of a glowing foot, the lolling back of a bright face gone blank. And his original froze as though caught beneath a lightning strike. Strange lines of lavender speared across his skin like a circuitboard. He held for an instant of mouth half-open and blind hand reaching, balanced at the edge of a spiral of dust. Before he flickered. Some unreality of perspective or perception, and Shiro saw the image of him tumbling eternally downward like dirty water down a drain.

Then it passed. Almost stumbling was only _almost._ A nebula was again a thing light-years across, perceivable only for its being light-years away. And his elder stood again at his side, condensed to a form no taller than he.

Shiro opened his mouth to question. But the moment quickly slid from memory, as his brain gave up trying to understand the things that it couldn't.

 

***

 

If he walked directly behind the other, to match him step for step, then the shining trail of footprints almost looked like it was his. They wandered in long starts and stops, spanning wide but never losing sight of each other, while their Lion hummed and stars tracked overhead. Shiro finally took a deep breath and asked what was on his mind,

"Why the fuck do you glitter?"

Brilliant laughter answered. The guilty party turned his palms upward, watching them sparkle in a manner most incriminating. "This?" he smiled. "Actually, the equation—"

But he paused, blinking down at his hands. He turned them over. Then turned them back. His fingers moved in a vague gesture of counting or calculating, curling to his palms one at a time. "You know..." he said. "I don't know."

He quickly dropped them back to his sides, grinning through the predictable dust plume, "What, you don't like it?"

And that made Shiro laugh. It felt wonderful. "It's not going to happen to me, is it?"

The other's smile seemed to quiet. "No," he said softly. "No, that would take quite a while." He turned to wander on, attended to by his personal herd of fireflies.

But Shiro caught him frowning at his hands, fingers curling one by one.

 

***

 

He was the life Shiro had lived...

He was sick of hearing that, but for the first time, the tone of the reminder might have been called _gentle_. At least the other seemed to be trying. The life Shiro lived but _you're not the lessons he—_

Shiro nodded along rehearsed, before impatiently cutting him off, "And you're nothing _but_ lessons."

The dusted head glanced up and Shiro realized the other hadn't actually said anything out loud.

But before that realization could alarm him, his original's bearing went listless. "That or just nothing." He held up his hand, where a small condensation of white whirled delightedly about his wrist. "I might be one of these Black dreamt up."

Yet, he looked at him oddly. Like he was puzzling out the universe while the clone just waited, feeling insignificant.

—Before he let his hand fall, turning away. The thought zoomed off past Shiro's arm and Shiro shied from the sharp cold. When he turned, the other was walking off with ground-eating strides. Giving his back to his frightful notions, and Shiro hastened to draw up alongside, not wanting to ask if they could be true. If he'd been existing beside a figment of the Lion's imagination.

There was still a part of him that balked at his own truths. _The life he lived,_ but nothing more. It was such a fundamental assumption he'd been asked to rewrite. _I'm me_ ; too basic a postulate to contradict. _Who else could I be?_  "There isn't anything else." And he looked down at his feet. "Everything I tried to do," everything he'd had at all, "—was Shiro." Everything that informed him and shaped him. The soul behind his every decision—

Had been Shiro.

But Shiro walked by his side, so what did that leave?

"They needed you, you know." He muttered it quietly, caught between soft and sullen as he thought back.

Both their feet came to a halt. Stars twinkled above him and around him. And in the two eyes that steadily watched. "They had you."

Him. The clone thought of the months with the pain in his head. Saying things he knew he'd never say, making calls he shouldn't be making, trying to hold everything together, never knowing just _what_ felt so wrong. Beginning to wonder, during dark stolen moments, if maybe this was it. If this was his mind finally giving out on him. Coming apart at the seams just when the entire universe _needed_ his best.

And yet. Here stood someone wearing his same face. But who knew what to do. Someone wiser, someone who knew what the fuck was going on...

Maybe it wasn't just the team who'd needed him.

The clone folded those words up, crossing his arms tight over his chest. It wasn't something he could suffer himself to say.

But he'd forgotten he never needed to say anything in here. Unprompted, a glowing hand gently caught his shoulder. Silver eyes watched, fingers curling around his nape in something almost like benediction,

"I know how scared you've been."

Air had laid frozen in his lungs for so many months now, that when the words punched it loose, he nearly coughed blood. It carved at his wooden heart, how deeply one person could understand.

(Proof positive, came the thought again, that _Shiro_ was the one who should always have been there.)

"Damn it," he breathed. "Why didn't you ever talk to me?"

The old eyes held a weight of patience. "You think I wouldn't have, if I could?"

Shiro's arms ached from how tightly he held them crossed.

Then the hand at his neck slipped away, as the other took a few steps off into the dark. Lights splashed up from his footfalls, dancing high overhead to play on his upturned face. He breathed slow, as though under a patch of sunshine.

Did the Black Lion register sunshine? The clone wondered how long since his original had felt it?

"You're not who I was," came finally. "It's up to you how you feel about that. You can never be who I was."

The copy's mouth quivered, trying to stave off despondency, since it was up to him how he felt about the overturning of his most basic premise.

Around them, the stars began to spin in anticipation. The clone wasn't sure why. Like a time-lapsed image they raced along and Shiro was afraid he'd find himself thumped down on his back. But his head didn't hurt, his chest wasn't tight. It wasn't happening because of him. Still, it was dizzying to watch the way lights clamored at the ghost like eager puppies, before spiriting off into distance.

"But," made him look at the other's face. Out in the world, that shine might have meant a prelude to tears. "I've changed and been changed so many times." Here, it was galaxies, frozen and burning and so far across. A long sigh, and Shiro's original looked at him with terrible eyes.

"There was an up-and-coming pilot, out of the Galaxy Garrison. That much, you know."

 

***

 

Before they'd made nice again, the brighter had reminded the darker, "Your mistakes are proof that having memories isn't the same as learning from experience. Crystal clear recollection didn't help you." He'd come as close to sneering as he ever did. "I'm only telling because you should know. But I don't think I mind if the knowledge hurts you. It made me very distressed what you did to yourself."

The clone didn't protest the unfriendliness. Not given the rights of the person it came from. The real Shiro, who had been held here unjustly, waiting to step back into his own place and correct his imposter's missteps. He'd return, and then the whole misguided, unhappy time since the clone was found, could all be left forgotten.

Could be undone.

 

***

 

"He lived to make it to Kerberos. He lived through capture." The other spoke slowly, like it was vitally important he be understood the first time. "He lived through Zarkon's arena and Haggar's attentions.

"And he died, when the backlash of an attack that took more than he had irradiated his Lion. And he was incinerated on the spot."

A slight shrug, before the ghost spread his hands and stars rippled like water. "Shirogane's dead, haven't you understood? He passed away over a year ago."

He looked sad for someone who shone so brightly. But Shirogane would remember that wise people could often look sad. If he thought of it, the face he'd remember would be his grandfather's.

"I've been here so long. Time moves differently, you know that." Overhead, the stars spun in perpetuity. He reached out a hand, cutting a waketrail into the lights sweeping past. The clone watched how streams wrapped between his fingers, and knew that if he were to stretch out his own arm, there would be no such welcome. The other wandered as a denizen of this place. He trod the plane as one who belonged here, dreaming creation and streaming through stardust. As he withdrew his hand and turned to walk off in the direction of infinity, his shadow unstuck its leaden legs to stumble after.

"I've been here longer than I've been anywhere else."

And as thoughtful people often do, he leveled mountains when he finally got to his point:

"I'm no more Shirogane Takashi than you are."

The clone's knees wavered. It had been the first thing he'd suspected, that _this wasn't Shiro,_ but he'd put it from his mind. He didn't know how he could carry this. That the entity who the most basic tenants of his thinking had told him to prioritize and emulate, _wasn't_ an entity. The pilot who'd pushed his race out into the universe, the paladin who rode the Black Lion, who'd ushered in a new guard of Voltron,

Was quite dead. He'd never met him, and would never know him.

It was an acute awareness, more painful than he'd thought to expect. This strident thing called mourning.

And once it began, it only grew heavier. The clone realized what his original—not his original, just some ghost—had been trying to tell him all this time.

He'd thought Shiro could make everything right. That if the team had Shiro again, then every horrid thing that had happened because of his imposter could be repaired. This is what he'd believed. He'd never stopped believing it, no matter what the other said. When told to consider his own pains, his own injustices, the clone had nodded along but he'd still remembered. As long as he'd had that promise of repair, every wrong could be neatly heaped on the head of Haggar's monster, and at the end of this that monster would burn.

His revelation came as a tower toppling in slow motion. There was no one to make that promise real. He'd held onto Shiro's return like a drowner clings to driftwood. And it dragged him down to bottom with the sudden understanding that all his hopes, he'd pinned on a dead man.

Denial shook his head back and forth. No. No, _no,_ Haggar's monster, he was her monster. It couldn't be any other way.

The other's eyes flashed. "You catching on? You think they'll know me, but they won't."

Yes, he was catching on. And he fought it, just like he had to. That's what Shiro _did._ He fought until he couldn't. Further. Until hope was gone, and his brain found a new way to live with the world.

Only he couldn't live with it. He was going to die, just like Shiro died.

And as he sank down to bottom, it sank with him that if Shiro was gone, then there was no point. He wasn't giving anything (" _Can you give what they're taking?_ "). He was just sending them a stranger. He wasn't stepping aside for his better's return.

He was just one more person dying.

" _You're_ the traveler, you know." The other wrung his hands. That frightening agitation began to gather at his edges. "Why do you think I've been calling for Allura? Everything I've been trying to make you understand was so _you_ could go back." Stardust flew from the arm he swept out, lovely and glittering and rendered helpless. "I would love to leave this place." It was nearly a snarl. "In your three years of living, you can't _fathom_ how I'd love to leave.

"But that comes second to what makes _sense._ And they. Won't. Know me." The flat statement landed like a lead weight. "Shiro's dead and _this_ is what that means. You can't cheat human development, your mistakes proved it." He advanced with each word and the clone stumbled backwards, wanting to run. "Well, you can't cheat human death either. You were determined to think I was something more, but I'm just _this._ I don't change. I don't develop. I don't grow, _nothing dead ever does._ "

Shiro's heart pounded. _You do,_ he wanted to argue, but he was too scared. _You change._ The lofty quiet from their first meeting couldn't be further removed from the shaking anger that faced him now.

Thunder rolled somewhere in the distance.

"I don't remember how to speak." The brighter he glowed, the less human he looked. "Not to anyone but you. I don't remember how to know them, not like you do. There's no faking humanity I _didn't fool you for a second._ "

The clone's search for denial came up empty. Nothing human could have provoked the terror he'd felt, when the too-knowing gaze was first turned in his direction. But how could _he_ be the one who needed to go back? "Th-they want me gone."

Sparking eyes narrowed, but the ghost no longer tried to deny it.

"They want Shiro back," the clone pressed.

"He _isn't here._ " His other's voice came out barely controlled. Cracking on a sad hint of incredulous laughter, "They can't have him." Unsympathetic, and nearly unkind, the ghost pushed farther into his space, expanding beyond the confines of anything that could have resembled a man from Earth of 26 years. And the clone realized the other had never been a creature of serenity, not like he'd thought. Shiro didn't come here and meditate his way into wisdom. He came here and was forcefed knowledge he wasn't meant for, until he lost everything that made him who he'd been. This pacing, these hissed words, this _fuming_ was the most emotion the clone had ever seen him muster. The only time that compared was when the clone first managed to scare him.

The ghost's shoulders drew tight like whipcord. "I don't have the life you have."

A tremor passed beneath their feet.

He stuttered back another step. "But- I'm not even real," it wasn't even _his_ life.

The glow grew blinding. He had to squint, watching the ghost struggle with wanting so badly to leave here and maintaining so urgently that he _mustn't._ "Everything I've done was to buy time. So she could _stop._ You wanted to believe I could but—"

The other lurched back. Sharply, like being snared by a hook. His eyes went wide and his arms lifted, reaching for Shiro.

But faster than the clone could grab him, he sank.

Not like he flickered and faded. Not like he winked from existence.

But like he'd been seized by a shark, dragged down somewhere dark and cold.

And Shiro's clone was by himself.

Automatically, his breath began to quicken, but _no,_ he couldn't lose his grip now. Not now. The clone dropped to his knees, settling down like he'd seen his other do. He bowed his head, flattening his palms to what passed for the ground, framing galaxies between his fingers. And he waited. He would not panic. The stars hissed but he focused on his breathing. Not on his fears, not on what he knew. He breathed slowly like he'd been taught, and waited for his only friend in here to come back.

The other returned calmer than when he'd left. The _thump_ sounded, and Shiro's head whipped around, to the sight of his own back turned towards him. The ghost stood quietly with hands resting by his sides, and the slow rain of starglow sparkled as it fell at his feet.

But when he turned, Shiro jerked back in surprise.

Under his left eye, just below the edge of his scar, the skin was cracked. Like porcelain, lines spiderwebbed up and down the side of his cheek, with light peaking through as though it had only been waiting for a weak point to burst between. Another web wove around his right shoulder, white-hot energy radiating outward. Another covered his heart.

He looked like he was deteriorating. Like—the clone gripped his arm against the phantom burn from destroying the facility—like the forces that lived inside him were barely being contained.

"He'd have to carry both." The ghost's voice was thin, no more than a breeze. "No escaping it. The copy's fears. And all the apathy. Cowardice. Callousness." He bobbed his chin left and right with the words. "The lessons and the living." His head swiveled towards the clone,

"We should have always been friends." Burning eyes wavered before despondency. "We should have been best of friends, if anyone should—"

"—we're the same person."

It took the clone moment to realize what he'd just said aloud. He shook it off as nonsense. But it upset him somehow, like there was something he was missing.

"Where did you just go?" he asked. "You don't look..." Worry tasted odd in his mouth, making him stammer. "You don't look right, what happened?"

The strange smile widened. "Everything is perceivable here. Everything is _moldable_ here, when you know enough of the rules of existence."

Fear for the other's preservation braided with fear of the other himself. But the ghost had never hurt him.

"And Black's taught me several." He looked a little bit mad. Or maybe it was just what he'd always been, and this was the first time the copy was seeing it without the rose-tinted label of _Shiro_ to smooth over the otherworldliness.

"You were talking to Black?"

The gleaming head tilted. "Oh," he said simply, eyes drawing narrow. "Right. I forget you can't speak with him."

He never had. Black had _never_ spoken directly to the clone. Since the day he'd been found, he'd never heard his Lion sing out. It had always been the ghost.

But the ghost didn't dwell on Black. "If I take your life from you," and there was horror there, quiet as he kept it, "I won't be enough to care for the things that you care about. They won't know me."

It was a lamentation and it was a sentencing. The eyes that alighted on Shiro's face were stark and unsettling, belonging to someone who had stewed too long in space and silence. Knowing things no human could know. The light was beautiful, but it was terrible. Shiro's brighter half was otherness that couldn't be bridged. An ever-distant consciousness that couldn't help but know too much.

Strange motives and strange hungers. Wasn't that what was frightening about ghosts?

But then the other sighed. His head sank forward, and the clone couldn't help but watch how light continued to bleed from the tear in his cheek. This was his only friend in here. The gleaming shoulders slumped and Shiro saw it for resignation. Overhead, the stars hissed. The brighter of the two may have called it a whispering, but the darker could only ever hear sibilance. He hadn't been rearranged to suit this place, he couldn't understand their words. Only the ghost's, whose thought patterns matched his, he couldn't understand anything else.

And he never would, would he? He wasn't going back, but he wasn't staying here either.

It seemed a sad story with a sad ending. The clone lowered himself, wrapping his hands about his knees, ankles crossed carefully. He looked down at his folded arms. "I don't want to die."

Every lie had been stripped from him. Everything he'd maintained, peeled away in layer after layer. Being Haggar's. Being Shirogane. Being whole. Believing refusal to recognize could ape forgiveness. The thought that he could give what was being taken from him. The idiocy that said he could have been ready to die. He wasn't. He didn't want to. Not as something that was nothing. Not summed up in four sentences.

Two feet appeared in front of his. He followed them up to where their owner stared at him intently. Slowly, he crouched down, elbows resting on his knees. For once, the far-seeing gaze remained right here.

"I'm sorry for everything that happened to you."

He spoke it like the makings of a discovery. "It shouldn't have. Not to anyone."

Shiro's copy realized it was the first time anyone ever said that to him. To _him,_ knowing what he was.

It

It was a strange feeling, much like hurt. A strident thing.

The ghost levered himself back up. His movements were heavy, as though the solemn weight of his bearing was suddenly something he could feel. Looking skyward to the place where he always seemed to take his cues, his chest barreled out, drawing a single deep breath. "You aren't Shirogane, you aren't who you want to be. Neither of us is."

That ached no less for having heard the words before. The copy wished so much that he could have been enough.

"But I'm going to sleep soon. And when I wake up, I'll be Shirogane." He lowered his head, eyes flashing sharp as white hair spilled forward, "If she doesn't stop."

Shiro looked up. "What?"

As he spoke, there was a lurch. Shiro's hands shot out to brace, but it picked him up and tossed him like a ragdoll.

When the tremor passed, he scrambled up, eyes wide in question. The elder stood, tottering like an ancient oak when cut near all the way through.

"What happened?" the clone asked.

Instead of answering, the ghost said, "Tell me about the team." The unsteadiness was new on him. "And about Earth. Tell me about everything of his."

"What?"

"Just go on, tell me."

 _What?_ But another tremor had his mouth opening to blurt out, "Lance didn't want to play Monsters and Mana but he was one of the best at it, Hunk doesn't cook as much as he used to, Coran talks code with Pidge, and Keith just got home what do you even wan-"

The ground shook again and the clone tumbled like a rock down a road.

 

_Thump._

 

"—nt to know?" He finished the words with dull pain throbbing in his head and under his ribs. Rolling heavily to his feet, he saw where the other still waited, a tree in the wind gently reeling.

"Things," whispered the ghost, "seem to be happening a little faster."

He'd kept his feet throughout the shaking, but with those words, his eyes slipped closed and he gave a long sigh. At one with his breathing, Shiro's other dropped to his knees, lights splashing around him. Starshine fell in tatters, seeping through the cracks in his skin.

The clone darted forward to catch hold of a swaying shoulder, holding tightly to the deific asshole who'd sat with him and lived in his pocket for who knew how long, and who'd never stumbled and fallen before.

"Wait, what's wrong with you?"

"Not me," he breathed. "You."

He was about to be erased.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One way or another, we're getting this thing done before S7


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Be humble for you are made of earth. Be noble for you are made of stars.  
>  _Serbian proverb_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PEA is a heart that beats but not strongly enough to be felt.  
> Disclaimer 1: Clearly, 1 gifset was inadequate to expunge my Kuron feelings. Eyes open for Easter eggs  
> Disclaimer 2: Fair warning. POV gets a little dicey towards the end. We've got 2 guys named Shiro here  
> Disclaimer 3: I had a velveteen rabbit coloring book as a little bby and y'all are about to reap either the benefit or the pain so get ready

 

 

"Tell me about his life."

The elder pressed it out between gritted teeth. "Start with what you lived for him. Back to what he lived. Tell me everything, we still have time." He pried his eyes open, looking around. "Or not. Or we don't—"

Before he was seized by a spasm that had him jackknifing forward practically into Shiro's arms.

"The hell?" Shiro's voice cracked on the words, but before his confusion could find its eloquence the other was already planting a fist on the ground to lever himself back upright. The exertion had his bright limbs shaking. Starglow rolled down his temples, dripping from his hair and there was something terribly unsafe about the crack in his face. But he gave his head a shake, breathing hard.

"Go on," he insisted. "I'll _give_ you time. Talk to me."

It seemed such a foolish demand for right then. Shiro didn't see how it could help anything, and he still had questions of his own.

But the ghost had asked so little of him.

And in three short years, he'd had so little in his life he could ever give to anyone.

So he swallowed his questions and got going. "Keith—" he had to swallow again, for the sudden tightness in his throat. "Keith had just come back." And he went backwards from there. The _ridiculous_ time Shiro got himself eaten by a mouse for sapping the last of Coran's good humor. Lance's loudest ever silent assassin. Pidge saving all of their lives when Shiro would have gotten them killed because Haggar was shrieking so loud he couldn't think. The odd sincerity with which Hunk had been inhaling Galra culture. Lance's kind patience when Shiro couldn't keep his doubts quiet. The near-halcyon months when Lotor had seemed a source of answers and poise, a way out of their forever war. Keith leaving them.

The other nodded along, bowed head staring down at his flattened hands. His frame shuddered with every breath he took. He would not say what was hurting him. "That's not all of it," he just kept saying. "Tell me about everything he loved."

As the clone talked, he tried to pretend he didn't notice how the context of it all began to feel scripted. Shiro, the copy, couldn't say he'd loved all of his life. But he loved the things his life was supposed to have meant. He loved his friends, he loved his team. But his love was childish. It couldn't see nuance, it couldn't hold them accountable, it couldn't—

How had he ever thought he was enough to be Shiro? How could he ever think he'd been enough to help anyone?

But he did love them. Whatever he could make that mean.

Stars were circling. _Thoughts._ They'd appeared with the first tremors, floating among the two where they knelt. As the clone watched, the little fairy lights darted briefly between him and his other, keeping them company if just for the moment. But they were denizens of this place, and one by one, they drifted away, all slowly rising back up into the sky where they would remain, waiting however long, until the plane was trod again.

One stray lingered, bobbing between them. Playful, for all the agonizing cold it could impart.

The elder's bright head hung heavy between his shoulders, but he looked up in confusion, to where the shimmering bauble laughed its way through a long goodbye. For all the age in his eyes, his voice sounded captivated, "That one yours or mine?"

And the younger stopped talking, to watch it with a new kind of wonder. Could it be his?

The light zipped over, to circle behind one Shiro's head. It corkscrewed around the other Shiro's forearm, dangerously close, kissing their edges. But as Shiro raised his hands, it darted up out of reach, speeding skyward. When it had gone, whatever spell it cast was broken and the clone dropped his hands. Shaking his head, he wondered what he'd been trying to do.

The elder looked at him, eyes alight with new determination. "Keep talking."

And he did.

He skimmed over the coalition that had been his and Allura's brainchild, but he talked at length of the evenings he'd spent pouring over plans with her. He talked back to the times before he'd been found (before _Shiro's ghost had found him_ , and to know the truth of the ghost's care reaching so far back was still such a marvel). They were the times before he'd been Shiro himself, but the ghost still said to _keep going._

And he did.

He took care to avoid revisiting the agony, white-hot and endless, that he now knew was called _dying._ But he spoke on the drain of Haggar's Komar, magnified and reflected back on Shiro's soul through four people he loved and let this happen to. He held nothing back of how truly awed he'd been, when they stood themselves up afterward. He talked back further, all the way to the first meeting with the Blade. The trials Keith saw through, the beautiful ferocity of the Red Lion when she came rushing to his aid.

Listening to the stories of his life, the elder shook. Fists bunched by his knees, every muscle wound into tetany. And as he spoke further, the clone was surprised to feel it too. Hints of a strain that sat deeper than anything he could remember experiencing. He couldn't put a name to it. But the longer he spoke, the more it bled into him. Hints. Edges. He could sense the pain that assaulted his other.

It was a strange feeling. He didn't know what it meant.

He talked his way back to Kerberos. He talked his way through Matt's luminous smiling friendship and Commander Holt's steady faith. He tried to talk about Adam. All the good and bad with him, all of the ugly, painful things that Shiro _missed_ so dearly. It was selfish to want to keep that for his own, it was too selfish. But the fuzzy memory of Adam's smile made his throat lock up, and Shiro couldn't make himself do it.

He talked his way back to Earth. Red dirt in the desert, yellow dirt on the steppe, mountains and cliffs and the way Keith had stared gobsmacked, from sixty feet above him.

The ghost's tight shoulders wavered. The unearthly poise wavered, _all of him_ wavered at hearing of Keith. "I watched him," he said, achingly soft. "Up until he left. When you both fell, I caught you." The strained smile on his face was quite different from any it had worn before. "He won't know me. I don't know what I'll do. But I'd like to see him again."

He spoke in the same way one would try to hold a ray of sunlight. Finespun and fragile, such care taken with every word. The fine tremor in his voice made Shiro's throat tighten. Because he wished for the same. Even if only for one last time, it was exactly what he wanted, too. And the want for himself circled his want for the other to _go home._ The force of it was startling, just how much he wanted the ghost to be able to go home. Back to the people he'd had to fight so hard just to remember. There were open arms waiting for him, there had to be. People he'd fought for past the point of dying, Shiro wanted him to _go._ The two feelings braided together, neither gaining a foothold over the other one. Shiro didn't want to leave his other here to rot. Shiro didn't want to be left here to vanish.

"I don't know why he would do this." The shake of the other's head was rueful. He looked up through the white of his bangs, where dust still tumbled, endlessly replenished and endlessly falling, "I'm sorry that's worth so little."

If he had a thousand years to think, Shiro wouldn't have any answer for that. He couldn't forgive it or enumerate it or even truly say how he felt about it. But he didn't have a thousand years, because suddenly the ghost's jaw clenched, veins cording in his neck beneath shimmering skin. The crack in his cheek widened, edges splintering until they crawled all the way up to his eye. Light streamed dangerously from the tear as naked pain glinted across the elder's face. "Allura," he whispered, staring off somewhere beyond the clone's head. Plaintive, like he was calling for her.

Like he'd _been_ calling for her.

"What's happening to you?" Shiro pleaded. No, insisted. He would not say another word if the other wouldn't just _tell him_ what was happening. And if that meant he never said anything else for the short remainder of his life, then at least he wouldn't have to hold out very long. But he'd had enough. He'd accommodated as far as he was going to.

Perhaps seeing it, the ghost finally ceded. "It's me she's moving," he said. "I'm try—" A shudder rattled him in place. He flickered, and Shiro was horrified to be able to see right through him.

But he faded back in like a bad signal, "—ng her didn't work, she doesn't listen. I thought that was all I could do for you, but it's not."

"What's not?" Nothing ever burned so terribly as helplessness. Shiro watched his brighter half sputter, hands aching to be able to anchor him somehow. "What are you _doing,_ just tell me."

The heavy head lifted, until silver eyes locked on gray and he said, like it was a given, "I'm trying to stop her."

And that brought the clone up short.

In his three short years of being, he had burned bridges and hollowed homes in the city Shiro's life had built. He knew the team wanted him gone. But someone, who knew everything he'd done, who knew what he was and _who he wasn't,_ thought the world was bettered for having him. Someone saw he was dying and hated it.

"Why are you crying?" Braced over locked elbows, the elder's voice came out unsteady.

Why _was_ he crying? Why _was_ he kneeling before a creature that flickered, bleeding light, and why _was_ he taking the other's shoulders in shaking hands while tears rolled down his face to spiral off into the spinning dark?

"Because it hurts."

Pain was a thing he could say he knew. Of many colors, tastes, and temperatures. He remembered when Haggar cut through Shiro's arm, and he remembered when her auxiliary cut through his. He'd been made to scream and to cry, even at times when he'd promised himself he wouldn't. After so little life, hurt might have been one of the only things he could say he knew _well._

But this burned in a matter entirely different. Like sunlight scorching his retinas, like fierce wishes made on comet tails and fought for with sweat and with blood. He gasped in a breath because this was winter cider burning a hole in his tongue, a roaring river of boiling hot affirmation that _someone_ thought him a thing to be fought for. Yes, the swell in his heart was painful. The blistering sweep of one person's kind regard burned at him very much.

"But," his voice was tentative. "I don't mind."

That made the other smile. Small, but with such a brilliance that to look at him made the ache in the clone's chest double and triple and still, he didn't want it to stop.

"Guess you're real then."

And he remembered what Shiro had learned about that. When he hadn't been more than a few years old.

As an echo of someone who'd died, the copy didn't have anything of his own. But as something that was real, he stepped into the ranks of an entire universe's reality. The interweaving of everything living and everything extant. And he felt it again, that same strange sensation of bleeding himself into the things before him. And taking on the strain they bore. "It's not just you and me," he breathed.

The other was smiling. "It's not."

It flashed through his mind, the unpolished way Keith had once marveled. Blurting it out, "We're all the same cosmic dust." At the time, Shiro had chuckled at him.

_But if you could ever jump high enough, you'd see you lived among something living._

And Shiro _was_ an astronaut.

"Now," said the other, "you should listen."

In a place where all things were perceivable, he suddenly beheld connections. Every tuned star, every breathing system, every living, glowing thought. Yes, the dull gray earth was _living_ and he'd jumped high enough to see it.

Responding again to his unspoken thoughts, the sage took his chin and looked at his eyes. He gazed back and was drawn deeper, until the other's face began to change. First, he bore the light around him, then he was a thin, old man. A Galra soldier on first deployment, an Olkari mechanist wondering if his daughter would return from her second tour of duty. A thousand victims savaged by imperialist conquest and a thousand more who stood up to fight it. A girl in California, thinking of aliens. A refugee, and then a fierce warrior. Then, he was a Lion, and then other people, too. Until finally, the shifting settled and he did see himself. Which is not to say that he saw the elder of two mirrors, or a reflection, or someone wearing his face. But simply to say that the connection they'd unearthed ran to such depths that there was one person kneeling there, not two. Humble for being made of earth. Noble for being made of stars.

In the midst of everything living, he filled his lungs and the Black Lion roared. As one, he breathed. And for a split second, he was sure he saw Shiro.

But the elder shuddered and the moment broke. "I'm sorry," gasped from his mouth, and the younger was jolted back to himself so hard he toppled over backward. Once again, they remained, one timid little darkling who knew he was real and one brilliance of starshine who had now begun to dim and wane, fighting the hand that would see him rehomed.

"Was it enough?" the other mumbled. But he wasn't asking Shiro. "Was it enough, I don't know." He huddled with his eyes shut, as though in denial.

Rolling up to his knees, Shiro's younger blinked in the semi-dark. Beneath his legs the glassy surface of the ground was cold. He couldn't name the thing that just happened. It left his bones thrumming, unable to make sense of it. But his other was shaking like a leaf, and he could make sense of that just fine. Reaching out, he asked, "She's not listening, is she?"

"No." The word was drawn tight. "She's not." Beneath Shiro's outstretched hand, the other's shoulder quivered and spasmed. To have lived and moved and had his being within the limitless consciousness of the Black Lion of the sky—Shiro couldn't imagine how exhausted the other had to be.

To say it still took everything in him: "Then stop."

Stop resisting her. _This doesn't help, it doesn't help_ so just stop.

Eyes of silver shot up in dismay. So, he summoned a smile, hoping the other wouldn't fight him on it. He didn't know how far he could push his unselfishness.

The elder considered. A muscle ticked in his jaw, and for a second it seemed like he'd hold out until Shiro broke first and begged not to die.

But then every tense muscle collapsed, and Shiro's hands were propping up slumping shoulders as a starlit head fell forward against his collarbone. Freezing and burning against his skin, while exhausted breaths fanned across his neck. But the alarming flicker died back down, until the other was again a glowing reliquary of unbroken lights. Shiro tried to help him back up, but all at once he felt tired.

Moving by inches, the other only managed to straighten himself halfway. He'd become so dim. "The words—" and he pressed a palm against his temple. "I don't- I'm sorry."

"S'okay," because Shiro would never blame him. _Sometimes nothing helps._

He supposed that meant he was going to die. Shiro's friends were going to kill him. Either because they wanted to, or because they didn't see any other way. Because Keith lied and said he was gone. Because Allura, who could help him if only she knew, _if only she wanted,_ would erase him from existence. Much as he and the ghost had tried, they couldn't make it stop. It was an exquisite frustration, just how much they had _tried._

That wandering spectre who'd guided his shadow as best he could, watched the ground quietly. His splayed fingers framed the stars beneath the glassy surface, arms wobbling as they held him up. "You know," he said. "There's so much I forgot about. I didn't mean to, but I did."

And then, of all strange things, the one built from stars turned his face to the one built of earth. And looked at him with admiration, "I wish I could talk to you for ages, until I remembered all of it."

The younger's mouth fell open. There'd been time for that. Time when they could have talked. But all their efforts in here had been for him. Appreciation tasted sour; he hadn't thought on what the other had given up.

Suddenly, he was finding it difficult to hold himself upright.

A hand took hold at the base of his neck, pleasant heat and sharp cold. "I know you're tired."

They were both tired. Reaching up, he gently squeezed the other's wrist. They tottered, a stiff breeze in danger of knocking them over. One who'd never had an identity, and one who'd had it but it died and left him.

Shiro's brighter half waned. Silver eyes bled to gray, letting go the far reach, giving up the wide knowing. Light bled off him and was not replaced.

"We'll get to sleep when she's done," the ghost said, meager offering that it was. But he glanced up with a sharp promise, "You know I'll hold onto you if I can. I don't know if I... But Black taught me, I'm going to try."

The clone thought back to his early time in here, when the other had been so deeply entangled with the Black Lion, and how it had been to watch them slowly separate. He'd seen the farseeing starkeeper soften into a thing that grew more and more human each time it spoke.

Until here it knelt, stammering through words as they both fought to keep their heads up. "Whatever I can do for you, I will. Black did it for me." Still unsympathetic but never unkind, he then said what they both knew, "But Allura's so much stronger." The silver gaze didn't hold any reassurance. No stirring hope. He'd hold as well as he could, to as much as he could. But Allura was still stronger.

"If you can't," the clone whispered. "I'll be gone?"

"Yes." The elder didn't evoke the Gautama right then, there was no projection of bottomless wisdom. He was simply a friend making a promise. And then he went and made another one. The clone's head was carefully drawn down until his forehead touched the other's. And the ghost spoke so quietly the words seemed to halt an inch from his mouth, hovering in the space between them. "I'll remember you, though."

The clone had to catch a sob before it left his throat. The gentleness shattered his control and he bit at his tongue to try and get it back. He knew he ought to be better than this. He should be glad to have been guided by someone so kind as his other proved to be. He should be glad to know Shiro would remember him. He'd had a year. More than he could have hoped for. He shouldn't be crying. The last thing he saw in life was Keith—breathing and blessedly alive, and that should be enough. He should be grateful for the days he'd had, he should be quiet he should _be quiet—_

But the hand at his nape remained gentle, and he gave up on the notion of dying with dignity. Looking up, gray met gray. No more silver or galaxies, nothing but pewter. He tried to lift his hands, but they were leaden at his sides, each weighing a year's worth of borrowed time. Crying made his eyes sting.

And he saw he wasn't the only one. Sparkling tears tracked their way down the ghost's cheeks surely enough. It made him laugh a little, that his enlightened cosmic flatmate would think him worth that effort.

Or maybe, the younger thought, maybe it happened as he became more human.

It should have been enough that one person would miss him.

The other barely glowed any longer. The light bleeding from his cracked skin had slowed, running down without replenishment. Around them, galaxies began to fade. Without the connection to the Black Lion, the other couldn't hold the stars for them.

 

_Thump._

 

It had been him this time. Not the younger, it had been him who lost his grip and tumbled hard enough to fling them both.

The younger huddled quietly. He hadn't been the one who'd slipped, but there was too little left of him to move on his own. So it fell to Shiro—for soon, he would be—to slowly push himself upright and hold the both of them. Silver smeared around his hands like a child's fingerpainting, before it sank away and was not replenished.

He wouldn't be doing much starwalking now. It took all the energy he had, just to shuffle over to the younger and wrap an arm over his back. "This," he tried to breathe slowly. "This feels pathetic."

The younger was heavy against his side. He huffed a weak laugh. "If you think _this_...?" and the thin voice was just a wheeze, "Then you really don't remember some of the places we've been."

And if that wasn't just a touch too true. He had to laugh a little wheeze of his own.

There were things about Shiro's life he couldn't remember. Important things, but they'd gotten lost. He didn't know his mother's face. Or for how long he'd had her. He couldn't say how remission felt. He didn't know his sister's laugh. Or the reasons why his brother hadn't been there, to see him off to Kerberos. He couldn't recount his days at the Garrison. Or the day he met Keith. The day he met Black.

He held tight as the younger sagged. The sight of thinned shoulders made his eyes burn, so he shut them.

It had been a long time since he could do that—shut his eyes and thereby avoid seeing. But humans could do it wherever they wanted. Humans could move, they weren't everywhere at once. Could see or not see as they liked. Humans could sleep whenever they tired.

He'd missed that.

Some time ago, he'd reduced humanity to a list of wants. The list had remained, even while its meaning was gradually supplanted by new knowledge.

He wanted to see Keith again. Somewhere underneath sunlight.

He wanted his team. Within reach, where he could hold them.

He wanted to walk. And to run.

He wanted to eat and move and breathe again.

He wanted to sleep.

As he'd shared his space with the younger, the words' meaning began to return. He wanted all these things he'd given up on ever having again.

But the person he held was dying in order to give them. He didn't want that. He'd had such trouble unearthing words, and now he was sure he'd never find any to convey how dearly he'd like to give back what he was being given. Someone innocent was dying for him. Disappearing, and he didn't know how much could be saved.

His teeth ground together, remembering how to experience frustration. He _would_ have known. Even just a moment ago, he was sure he still would have been able to know, but Black's power was draining away. What he retained was vast, but not vast enough. Everything he'd learned, yet he still could not prevent this from happening.

Shiro would have lamented over that. He'd have agonized. He'd have fostered the hurt close to his heart and carried it with him to the irrational point of unwellness.

And as the length of his reach flickered and died, and his remembered humanity cracked through its rust, it seemed that so too would he.

"I'm sorry." And he meant it. To take on another's pain as his own made no sense at all, yet he was relearning sympathy.

 

***

 

His fingers gripped at his other's shoulders, closed in something like supplication. The waning light glowed through the backs of his hands as he grew ever more insubstantial. Stronger arms had to help hold him up.

It was a kindness that the other stayed with him. He'd made such a mess of his life.

"You didn't," made Shiro want to roll his eyes at how the ghost still always managed to know what he was thinking. But he could barely keep them open. Still, if the elder always knew, then maybe he'd be able to answer:

"Was I worth anything?" The clone hadn't managed to be Shiro. He wasn't able to stop Haggar. In the end he was just dying. The others had not found him, much as he had prayed they would care to try.

"Did I make any difference?"

And Shiro—for very soon he would be Shiro—pulled him back to meet his gaze, eyes shining with the last traces of starlight and cosmic knowing. He chuckled, as though remembering something fond. And when he spoke, it was with the voice of a Lion. Low and enduring and eternal, the farseeing wanderer they were both so privileged to serve. For the first time in the clone's entire life, the Black Lion spoke to _him_.

"Yes," he said. "You were brave."

The words that followed had a lilt to them, like they'd been said many times before. A collective consciousness the younger now joined, of all the people who knew it. A little thing they'd heard somewhere. Something they'd read.

Something they remembered.

Light streamed over the far horizon. A brilliant sun, rising over a place that had always been dark as Allura _finally,_ finally made her entrance. Shiro's head rolled back on his neck, watching the stars as they disappeared. He wanted to sleep. They both needed so much to sleep.

Neither could move, but the dawning came to them. Brighter and brighter, it rose until they were surrounded. Bright enough to disappear into.

"You still—?"

"I'm here."

The team was waiting. Somehow, after so much, they were finally there waiting. Shiro had given up hope they would ever find him.

He had only prayed they would care to try.

The light grew so bright he couldn't see.

Blind hands propped each other upright. Shiro reached out to hold the angle of his jaw, fingers curling against his nape. "You ready?"

"Yeah." And Shiro reached back.

He wondered if—

 

 

 

 

 

 _Thump_.

 

 

 

 

 _Thump_.

 

 

 

_Thump-thump._

 

 

 

Shiro  _breathed_.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> seeee? PEA is a _heart_ rhythm \^^/
> 
> * _"Yes," he said. "You were brave..."_ yes that's the beginnings of a quote. One [gifset](https://sassafrassrex.tumblr.com/post/176824778450/sassafrassrex-did-i-make-a-difference-guess-i) was... yeah, not adequate to expunge my feels. But it _is_ 3,000-ish notes' worth of ppl who've now gotten an oblique mention within the fic (yes hi, you're that collective), so I thought that was the right amounts of cheesy and cute.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading. This was rather far outside my comfort zone, and I'm kinda terrified that I posted it. Not sure if I did it justice. If you enjoyed, please consider leaving a comment.


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